Biographies & Memoirs

A MAIL ON SUNDAY AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR.
The little-known true story of the woman who headed the largest spy network in Vichy France during World War II.

In 1941, a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader ...

In 2015, at the age of thirty-eight, Nina Riggs, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it metastasised later that year. Her mother had died only a few months earlier from multiple myeloma. In the Spotless Orange Light she tells her story in ...

A moving account of art and caretaking in a time of uncertainty and loss

A poignant and inspiring memoir by Afghanistan's youngest female mayor and devoted human rights activist. As featured in the NETFLIX documentary IN HER HANDS.

From bestselling author David Sedaris, the second volume of diaries - the source of his remarkable autobiographical stories.

'He's like an American Alan Bennett, in that his own fastidiousness becomes the joke, as per the taxi encounter, or his diary entry about waiting interminably in a coffee-bar queue' Guardian review of An Evening with David Sedaris

Hanif Kureishi offers an insight into the birth of a writer - himself - through this memoir that conjures up a family story of how he found his own literary calling from the ashes of his father's failed attempts in the past even as the world turned upside down and India split in two along religious lines.

Nelson Mandela is one of the world's most revered public figures, a man synonymous with the long, bitter struggle to rid South Africa of an apartheid regime and replace it with a multi-racial democracy. Today, he is seen as the face of world freedom, an ambassador for civil rights, a heroic liberator ...

The author investigates the secret life of Matisse, born in war-torn, poverty-stricken Flanders, whose paintings shocked and infuriated his contemporaries in the first years of the century.

Exploring Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's life and work, this book seeks to reveal the truth behind the man and how he chronicled the 1890s through his art. Lautrec was linked to the social and political movements of his time and his main subjects were the bars and dance-halls of Montmatre.

A mix of quotations, Bible messages and prayers, which focus on the blessing of friendship.

"A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism from the left and right alike"--Amazon.com.

Michael Coren's biography reveals the complexity and paradox of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: the Catholic who rejected organised religion, the atheist who later adopted spiritualism, the family man who loved another woman throughout his marriage, the creator of Sherlock Holmes - who wished to destroy his ...

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019'[A] painfully intense, courageous and gripping account of [Fanning's] journey to the underworld of madness and back. This is a brave and instructive book.' Irish Times'Extraordinary. An account of mental illness, grief, delusions, homelessness, a fractured ...

An irresistible mixture of memoir, biography, cultural analysis, experiment and hero-worship about one person's enduring obsession. Anniversary Edition with new preface published to coincide with the new film, Judy, starring Rene Zellweger.

James Baldwin was born into the squalor of a Harlem tenement and transcended an early life of setbacks and racism. A storefront preacher at the age of fourteen, he supported his entire family - mother and eight siblings - before he began writing for prestigious journals such as The Partisan Review. Troubled ...

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of difference. I shall still be thought to be kindly, cosy and essentially harmless. I am in the pigeon-hole marked 'no threat' and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork ...

Hogben escaped from a background of religious bigotry by the academic ladder and gained a major scholarship at Cambridge and graduated in 1916. During a noteworthy academic career, he found time to be active in the Fabian Society and in the London Labour Party. He also founded the Journal of Experimental ...

An intriguing account of a woman at the heart of world politics, half a century before women had the vote The world was at a point of transition between the Victorian age and the modern world of the twentieth century.

An in-depth look into the life of Romantic essayist Charles Lamb and the legacy of his work